3/16-3/17

Monday and Tuesday involved some serious hunt-and-find missions both physically and on the computer. Ok, well mostly on the computer.This was fun and challenging but TOTALLY up my alley. (Future perfect position in baseball: game show host). Let's take a look at those trivia facts:

St. Petersburg was the home of the St. Petersburg Pelicans in the short-lived Senior Professional Baseball Association. St. Petersburg won the only league championship in 1989

Tampa Tarpons started play in the Florida State League in 1957

Tropicana Field (then the Florida Suncoast Dome) was completed and opened to the public in 1990.

The St. Louis Cardinals finally moved their Spring Training home to St. Petersburg in 1947.

The New York Giants and New York Yankees switched Spring Training homes for one season, with the Giants playing at Al Lang Field in St. Pete prior to the 1951 season.

The last time a Boston Major League Baseball team called Tampa Bay home for Spring Training was the Braves in 1937.

The Blue Jays have called only one place home for Spring Training, playing in the Tampa Bay area in Dunedin, FL since 1977.

The Ted Williams Museum and Hitters Hall of Fame opened at Tropicana Field in 2007.

The St. Petersburg Saints became the only Florida State League ever to win 100 games in 1958.

The 1961 Tampa Tarpons team was led by Reds farmhand Pete Rose who set a still existing Florida State League mark with 30 triples that year.

The St. Petersburg Devil Rays featuring a 19-year-old Jared Sandberg won the Florida State League championship in 1997.

However, they came back and said yeah that's great and all but we want to emphasize specific years in our history too. Those years were 1935, 1958, 1969, 1974, 1983, 1998, and 2005. Boy, were those years hard to work out! This time I took the lead, and I did manage to get some good trivia from them:

1935 - In Babe Ruth’s final season in baseball, he plays for the Boston Braves and spends Spring Training in St. Petersburg, Florida at the St. Petersburg Athletic Park.

1958 – Tampa bay baseball legend Don Zimmer plays for the Los Angeles Dodgers in their first season on the West Coast. Zimmer hit .262 with 17 home runs and 119 hits in 127 games in 1958. (An alternate is the one I already submitted: “The St. Petersburg Saints became the only Florida State League ever to win 100 games in 1958.“

1969 – The Florida State League is paced by the Orlando Twins, with 18-year-old pitcher Bert Blyleven, who goes 5-0 with a 1.46 ERA, and the Miami Marlins, with 20-year-old Don Baylor who hits .375 in a late call-up.

1974 – The Tampa Tarpons win the Florida State League North Division. This would be the last season in the baseball career of Tarpon infielder Randy Poffo, later known as Hall of Fame wrestler “Macho Man” Randy Savage.

1983 – The Tampa Tarpons finish in a distant 4th place in their division, but not for the efforts of OF Paul O’Neill (.278) and P Tom Browning (8-1, 1.49 ERA).

1998 – A dream is realized as the Rays play their first game in the franchise’s history and Hall of Famer Wade Boggs hits the team’s first ever home run in front of a capacity crowd of 45,369.

Looks like a mess but that is is the mess that it takes to send out BOBBLEHEADS!

As we walked in the lower right field concourse Tuesday afternoon, i couldn't help but notice this stockpiled mess of cardboard and shipping supplies. Further inspection determined that this was the distribution of the free-with-purchase gifts ticket plan members received this season for signing on, including a limited Kevin Kiermaier bobblehead! And people love both KK and bobbleheads so you know those went flying.It's true what they say: you don't want to see how the sausage is made. In this case, it's probably more pleasant to just wait for your gift to arrive at your doorstop.

These two pictures above are from the right field street concourse food court. They are replacing some drab surroundings with what looks like a GREAT mural of our two mascots Raymond and DJ Kitty. Kudos to the artists!

3/18

Today was a nice busy day. It started out slowly, with my usual assignment of finding some kind of pictures for someone. In this case, itwas the Mystery of the Blue Mohawk Kid. In the last two seasons, some kid with a blue mohwak came to one of our games and ate a hotdog. He ate that hotdog so photogenically and appealingly that we wanted his picture for an ad. Good luck finding it though! It still remains hidden even now. But I will not rest until i find it...

Then came the lunch hour. We were tasked with distributing the season tickets and ticket plans that are allocated to partners in their agreements. Some of these tickets are much more coveted than others by the particular partner and it is our job to make sure they have all they have coming and in plenty of time before the season. We doled out the tickets, sponsor managers took their respective allotments and lunch was served. Bing. Bang. Boom. What you see below is the newly-renovated 2nd-floor Ticketing Break Room. It's niiiiiice

Niiiiiiiice.

Then my boss Sean had scheduled a special regular weekly meeting for he and Kim and I to make sure we never lose sight of each other's goals and tasks. That way, he makes sure we're killing it and doing what we can and we know someone is always going to be acknowledging our hard work. At the same time we get feedback and further document our experiences.